Over the fifty years since her death, poet Sylvia Plath has gathered a following that goes much beyond required reading 11th grade. One of my personal favorites, Plath expresses her violent frustrations as a young woman existing in post-war England, while still remaining excruciatingly relevant and empathetic to the 21st century romantic. At the age of thirty, Plath stuffed a towel under the gap of her kitchen door to protect her young children, and stuck her head in the oven. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning. One month before her suicide, Plath published the semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. The novel centers around a young writer slowly collapsing into severe depression and SPOILER eventually recovering. This was Plath's first and last book, but over the years I've come across a few gems that I believe even Sylvia would approve of. If you liked The Bell Jar, I would recommend reading these books as well.
1. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
This memoir was published a few months after the suicide of Kurt Cobain. The untimely death of the grungey, innovative, youth icon sets the tone for the rest of the book. Like The Bell Jar, the story revolves around a young writer at Harvard University. She becomes increasingly depressed and disenchanted with the world, ultimately getting her life back together with the help of Prozac.
2. The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls by Emilie Autumn
This is like nothing you've ever read before, and nothing you'll probably read afterwards. This is a memoir with an experimental twist. It chronicles the author's time spent in a mental hospital as young girl, paralleled with the fictional happenings of a girl confined to an insane asylum in Victorian England. The collages and illustrations adorning each page are so unsettling beautiful.
3. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
This is a quick read, which is convenient because you won't be able to focus on anything else until you finish it. The story is told though the journal of an allegedly unstable young woman whose husband has confined her to one room and has forbid her from doing any work, as a part of his treatment for her . He is attempting to treat her for her "hysteria", which was a common diagnosis for women who were sexually resistant and/or outspoken. Over the course of the story, the reader is left to decide wether the heroine is simply a victims of her time period, or if her husband was right after all.
4. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
The lesser known novel of Salinger, Franny and Zooey is about two very different siblings going through similar emotional and mental breakdowns. They try to help each other, which makes everything go downhill. Like my next selection, this sort of ends happily.
5. Finding Alice by Melody Carlson
The title character has always been a genius, which can be a gift and a curse (especially for a girl). Her intricate mind becomes more tangled than ever her senior year of college when she begins to experience visual and auditory hallucinations. She is subjected to complex and counterproductive treatments that only make her retreat more into her religious delusions. There is an ambiguously hopeful ending, so you will not be consumed by despair.
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